Please use the comments to demonstrate your own ignorance, unfamiliarity with empirical data and lack of respect for scientific knowledge. Be sure to create straw men and argue against things I have neither said nor implied. If you could repeat previously discredited memes or steer the conversation into irrelevant, off topic discussions, it would be appreciated. Lastly, kindly forgo all civility in your discourse . . . you are, after all, anonymous.

9 Responses to “Attacks Attributed to al-Qaeda: 1992-2008”

Deaths attributed to drunk drivers 1992-2008, approx one person every 50 minutes.
Money to be made by campaign donors getting drunk drivers off the rode? ZERO.
Money to be made by campaign donors chasing terrorists around the globe? Trillions.
Ratio of people killed by terrorists to drunk drivers? You do the math.

This article appeared in the Zanesville Times Recorder on June 25, 2009.

“…”What spectacle can be more edifying or more seasonable, than that of Liberty and Learning, each leaning on the other for their mutual & surest support?”
Jefferson also counseled: “If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be. … Let our countrymen know that the people alone can protect us against the evils (of misgovernment).”
How deep our ignorance of who are has grown since Alexis De Tocqueville wrote in 1831 (Democracy in America): “In New England, every citizen receives the elementary notions of human knowledge; he is moreover taught the doctrines and the evidences of his religion, the history of his country, and the leading features of its Constitution.
“In the States of Connecticut and Massachusetts, it is extremely rare to find a man imperfectly acquainted with all these things, and a person wholly ignorant of them is a sort of phenomenon.”
Am I exaggerating in speculating that now in our schools, homes and streets, there are many such phenomena largely ignorant of why they are Americans. Also, I would add the many in our state legislatures and in Congress.
And Obama, asking us to be “anchored in our timeless ideals,” says nothing about his National Security Agency’s accelerating attacks on our individual privacy as its enormous supercomputer (code name: “Black Widow”) devours the Fourth Amendment in our Bill of Rights. The Baltimore Sun’s national security correspondent, David Wood (Oct. 26, 2008), reports:
“(The Black Widow) scans millions of domestic and international phone calls and e-mails every hour” as it extracts “key words and patterns” of our communications to harvest and database possible threats to national security.
There’s no way to get your name removed from that bottomless hole of suspects because you can’t find out whether it’s there. Imagine Jefferson’s reaction if he’d been able to foresee the Government Black Widow at large in this republic…”http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=10316
~~http://www.cato.org/multimedia/daily-podcast/constitution-liberty-retrospect decent ‘Thinking’-fodder..
~~
Mothers’ Day Proclamation: Julia Ward Howe, Boston, 1870

“Arise, then, women of this day! Arise all women who have hearts,
whether our baptism be that of water or of fears!
Say firmly: “We will not have great questions decided by
irrelevant agencies. Our husbands shall not come to us, reeking
with carnage, for caresses and applause. Our sons shall not be
taken from us to unlearn all that we have been able to teach
them of charity, mercy and patience.
We women of one country will be too tender of those of another
country to allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs. From
the bosom of the devastated earth a voice goes up with our own.
It says “Disarm, Disarm! The sword of murder is not the balance
of justice.”
Blood does not wipe our dishonor nor violence indicate possession.
As men have often forsaken the plow and the anvil at the summons
of war, let women now leave all that may be left of home for a
great and earnest day of counsel. Let them meet first, as women,
to bewail and commemorate the dead.
Let them then solemnly take counsel with each other as to the
means whereby the great human family can live in peace, each
bearing after their own time the sacred impress, not of Caesar,
but of God….”http://www.peace.ca/mothersdayproclamation.htm

Worthy noting how many of these attacks are on islamic targets, either directly at the governments or indirectly by hurting their economy. The idea that somehow these countries governments secretly support those organizations is stupid. Yes they have lunies supporting terrorists just like we have lunies on the extreme right or left attacking our government with secret approval from other extremist in our country. But the top leadership are targets and, therefore, considers the terrorists enemies.

Is this actual organized crime?
I personally don’t believe in the whole terrorist vampire squid, whatever reason that drives those people into blowing themselves up is blurred by a simplistic Al Qaeda tag.

Thank you for putting the numbers behind what I’ve been saying for a long time. How the hell did we allow ourselves to get pulled so far off course last decade by a threat to life that is miniscule compared to drunk driving or firearms deaths? Once 9/11 happened, we had no choice but to go into Afghanistan and take out Osama and al Qaeda– which should have happened in late 2001 at Tora Bora, and certainly would have happened earlier than May, 2011 if the Bush administration had focused a fraction of the resources on the hunt for OBL that it did on the Iraq fiasco. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jJmFkbBjbO0 But the rest of the garbage — the torture, the warrantless wiretaps, the trillions of dollars and thousands of lives wasted in Iraq — what the hell were we thinking, and why did we allow it to happen?

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About Barry Ritholtz

Ritholtz has been observing capital markets with a critical eye for 20 years. With a background in math & sciences and a law school degree, he is not your typical Wall St. persona. He left Law for Finance, working as a trader, researcher and strategist before graduating to asset managementRead More...

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